and alarm to every English administration for many years, and deluded and mocked his miserable fellow Irishmen, living in splendor all the while on the money which they gave as freely as we have seen money given in our own country for the liberation of Ireland during the months that are past. His last years were the fitting close of such a life. When in 1843 he got up his series of "monster meetings" for repeal, culminating with that at Tara, where the attendance was variously estimated at from five hundred thousand to two millions, for the first time in his life he was seriously alarmed, finding that he had raised a spirit which he could neither control nor guide, and besought his countrymen with agony to abstain from outrage and violence, and was only too glad to escape from the terrible rising tempest by aid of the government he had so long maligned, when by proclamation it forbid the proposed Sunday monster meeting at Clontarf, and all similar assemblies. The apartments assigned to O'Connell in the Richmond Penitentiary in Dublin, as a conspirator, were very different from the palace he had pretended to dream of in the same beautiful city. Still worse, if possible, than the sentence which confined him to prison, was the decree of the Peers reversing the judgment of the lower court, and opening his prison doors, because it deprived him of a martyr's crown. Thenceforward Daniel O'Connell was a broken down, dispirited, miserable old man. We saw him in a great meeting in Exeter Hall in 1846 for the repeal of capital punishment, enveloped in a cloak, feeble and haggard and bowed down. We could not hear a single word of his brief speech, although we were on the platform. "Fallen like Lucifer," we said within ourself, "never to rise again." The next year he died in Rome, having grown more and more melancholy to the last, harrassed with the fear of being buried alive, and repeating anxiously the prayers enjoined by his confessor.

We would gladly dwell on the many matters of deep interest so ably treated in this volume; as the accession of that interesting maiden to the British throne just as she had attained her majority, with the universal admiration she speedily excited by her many beautiful and queenly qualities; the dreadful famine; the great anticorn-law agitation, with its grand result, total repeal; the brilliant career, tragic death, and character of Sir Robert Peel; etc., etc.; but our space will not permit.

On one important point we are compelled to differ with the author. Miss Martineau thinks the Dissenters made a mistake in opposing and defeating the education clauses of Sir James Graham's Factory Bill in 1842. We think otherwise. That England was suffering badly then, and is suffering badly still for lack of a system of public

schools is most true. But Sir James Graham's Bill was so framed as to put the proposed system of national education into the hands and under the control of the clergy of the Established church. The clergy of that narrow and intolerant church would not consent to any thing else, and the great bodies of religious dissenters, the Independents, Baptists and Methodists, so largely composing the population of the country, would not of course consent to a system which placed the education of their own children in the hands and under the direction of the priests of that arrogant State church; and so these three great denominations were firmly banded together in a determined opposition to the measure; holding crowded and enthusiastic meetings in every section of the land, dissecting the provisions of the Bill with keenest logic, and sending earnest petitions to Parliament that it might not pass. Two hundred such petitions were presented in a single day, including one from the city of London having fifty five thousand names. This opposition represented not the narrowness and bigotry of the Dissenters, as Miss Martineau would have us think, but their intelligence and self-respect, and proper regard for their own religious principles. Their interest in popular education has been indicáted by the very large aggregate sum they have raised by voluntary contribution every year since for the maintenance of day schools in connection with their own places of worship, or else under the united direction of all three denominations. Is it quite a demonstrated point that our own system of public education is absolutely perfect in all its provisions and its actual working? We think not. Some of us remember the day when Christianity had more than a nominal place in our common schools. Great is the change, and our children suffer loss.

17.-The Mystery of Iniquity Unveiled; or Popery Unfolded and Refuted, and its destination shown in the light of Prophetic Scriptures, in Seven Discourses. By CHANDLER CURTIS. 12mo. pp 417. Boston Crocker & Brewster. 1866.

THERE are not enough of this kind of books, nor are they sufficiently read. When Roman Catholic votes are courted by demagogues, and city officials grace papal ceremonies, and city authorities confer special and exclusive and astonishing favors on Romanists, it is time that the mystery of iniquity, that "doeth already work," was unveiled. Very few know the arrogant claims, the false documents, the idolatrous worship, the Jesuitical craft, the bloody intolerance, of this denomination. With no change of principles, but only of policy, from age to age, and ready always to repeat the past when it will be safe, never discovering an error in her

self, nor a truth out of herself, the same to-day as a thousand years ago, her history should be studied in the light of history and topically.

Mr. Curtis has done his work well. It shows extended and careful research, and is as thoroughly sustained by quoted Romanist authorities as a papist could wish such awful sayings and doings to be. Some may suppose the position and doctrines and practices ascribed here to the papists are ancient only and obsolete. To remove the error of such, Mr. Curtis would have done well to use more freely modern and papal authorities, such as: Hell Opened, Dean Alford's Romanism at Rome, Tuberville's Abridgement of Christian Doctrine, The Grounds of Catholic Doctrine, Purgatory Opened, or The Month of November, Rome Pagan and Papal, Percey's Romanism at Rome, Mendham's Literary Policy of the Church of Rome, Cotton's Rhemes and Doway, and many of the juvenile and Sabbath School Text Books that may be found in abundance in any Catholic bookstore.

Authorities of this kind, modern, in present use, and abundant, would convince the most doubtful that the leopard has not changed his spots since the days of the Leos and Innocents of bloody and vicious memory.

18.-The Scripture Law of Divorce. By ALVAH HOVEY, D. D., Professor of Christian Theology in the Newton Theological Institution. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1866.

Ir was full time to write out the Law of the Lord on this subject when the docket of the Supreme Court at one session lately had forty two divorce cases. This is but an index to very common facts, showing a state of things in domestic relations sorrowful and alarming in the extreme. If we can not preserve the family, we can not preserve a society better than the Parisian, and if divorce is allowed to be so easy and common we can not preserve the family. On a question so high in the scale of morals it seems eminently fitting that the Bible, among us, should be the umpire and last source of appeal. Dr. Hovey shows with perfect clearness that the Scriptures allow conjugal infidelity alone to be ground for divorce. By what reasoning and pleading human law repeals, supplements or varies this one law of God, we are not well informed, but in the Christian simplicity of our submission to divine teachings, we presume men have no authority whatever to do it. God allows separation,, but no marrying again while one of the original parties survives, unless they have been separated and divorced for adultery, and then only to the innocent party. This treatise is admirable in design, method

and execution. It has the additional worth of being, in a sense, a Result of Council ecclesiastical, convened to give an opinion on an actual case, where a church-member had married a person divorced for other cause than the scriptural one.

'19.-Shakespeare's Delineations of Insanity, Imbecility aud Suicide. By A. O. KELLOGG, M. D., Assistant Physician, State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, N. Y. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1866. LIKE Jacob's well at Sychar, Shakespeare is a fountain from which successive generations draw, and constantly what is fresh and new. The study and the volumes suggested and worked up by the stimulus of this old author are a perfect wonder.

The three essays composing this neat volume originally appeared in the American Journal of Insanity, and are now a reprint improved. They are well executed by a great admirer of him of Avon, having been written by one adapted by profession and circumstances to study this class of Shakespeare's characters. For a topical reading of the great dramatist, these would be eminently serviceable, while they show how carefully and widely and in advance of the physiologists of his day, Shakespeare had observed and studied man in the three points of the Essay.

20.-The Christian's Daily Treasury. A Religious Exercise for Every Day in the Year. By Ebenezer TEMPLE, author of "The Domestic Altar," etc. Boston: Gould & Lincoln. 1866.

THESE four hundred and thirty two pages give a little more than one to each day of the year in the brief, suggestive, scriptural and godly passages that every Christian needs. The topics are prac-·

tical and of a wide range, and the entire spirit of the book is devout, and is specially adapted to the invalid and aged Christian, and to him whom business hurries with incessant cares, and deprives of full readings and meditations.

21.-History of the Jewish Church. Part II. From Samuel to the Captivity. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., Dean of Westminster. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1866.

THIS is the second series of Dr. Stanley's attempt to popularize biblical history. The same brilliant qualities of style, the same disregard of the literal statements of the sacred record, the same genial and liberal spirit toward extreme views, whether true or false, characterize this, as the preceding volume. We think such treatment of biblical subjects does some minds mischief, and some minds good. Which result preponderates, we hardly know. We fear, the first.

It is dangerous to shake human confidence in the exact truthfulness and trustworthiness of the Bible. And, yet, the lifelikeness of these volumes must give to the study of biblical subjects new fascination, while they certainly impart much useful information.

22.-Revolution and Reconstruction.

Two Lectures delivered in the

Law School of Harvard College. By JOEL PARKER, Royall Professor. New York: Hurd & Houghton.

1866.

THE eminent author, in his regular course of Lectures on Constitutional Law, here discusses the profound and agitating questions of secession and the rebellion; State sovereignty; confederation and the fundamental law of the Union; the suppression of the rebellion, and the powers exercised therein; counter revolution and reconstruction or restoration; the power of the Constitution in bringing about peace; the status of the rebel States after the war; organic changes in our government achieved, in progress or contemplated ; military necessity and law in their relations to civil law; treason and its punishment; the constitutional guaranty of a republican government in each State, etc.

To the discussion of these topics Judge Parker brings rich resources from colonial and ante-revolutionary times, the eras of the Confederation and of the adoption of the Constitution, together with its interpretation by the framers and first executors. We find here a very scholarly, dignified and genial treatment of these grave questions, the manner being worthy the chair from whence they emanate. 23.-Hope for the Hopeless. An Autobiography of JOHN VINE HALL. Edited by REV. NEWMAN HALL, LL. B., of Surrey Chapel, London. 12mo. pp. 264. New York: American Tract Society. THIS is a genuine autobiography of a most remarkable sinner and Christian. If one wishes stirring incidents, romance, narrow escapes, heroism, slavery, emancipation, sin and grace, battles, victory alternating, working, watching, triumph and glory, all in one "hero of the story," this is the book for him. It has sentiment enough for the most ardent, and what is specially to be regarded is, that all the thrilling interest of the volume grows out of facts in the life of a real man. We see little need for writing romances when such life-material may be had, or for reading them, while such books remain unread.

This is a volume for temperance men to read and study. It is full of hints, encouragement, example, and stimulus for them. Fallen mournfully himself, renewed by amazing grace, and inade an eminently useful servant of God, Mr. Hall was every way a rare